Romansh
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Romansh Rumantsch |
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---|---|---|
Spoken in: | Switzerland, Italy | |
Region: | Graubünden | |
Total speakers: | 50,000–70,000 | |
Language family: | Indo-European Italic Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance*[1] Gallo-Rhaetian Romansh |
|
Official status | ||
Official language of: | Switzerland | |
Regulated by: | no official regulation | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | rm | |
ISO 639-2: | roh | |
ISO 639-3: | roh | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. |
Romansh (also spelled Rumantsch, Romansch or Romanche) is one of the four national languages of Switzerland, along with German, Italian and French. It is one of the three Rhaeto-Romance languages, believed to have descended from the Vulgar Latin variety spoken by Roman era occupiers of the region, and, as such, somewhat resembles Italian, French, Spanish and Catalan. It is spoken by about 50,000[1]-70,000 people in the canton of Graubünden (Grisons), of which about 35,000 speak it as their first language. Spoken by fewer than 1% of Switzerland's 7.4 million inhabitants, it is the smallest of Switzerland's national languages in terms of number of speakers, about half the size of Switzerland's largest community of speakers of non-official languages (Serbo-Croatian), with some 111,000 speakers.
Contents |
[edit] Dialects
Romansh is an umbrella term covering a group of closely-related dialects, spoken in southern Switzerland and all belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance language family. The other members of this language family are from northern Italy: Ladin, with which Romansh is more closely related, is spoken by some 20,000 in the Dolomite mountains of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, and Friulian is spoken by around 500,000-600,000 people in northeastern Italy.
The five largest dialects in the Romansh family are:
- The Rhine Dialects
- Sursilvan — in the Vorderrhein (Rain anteriur), including Lumnezia, Foppa, Cadi (Surselva)
- Sutsilvan — in the Hinterrhein (Rain posteriur), including Plaun, Tumliasco, Schons (Sutselva)
- Surmiran — in the Julia and Albula valleys, including Surses, Sutses (Surmeira)
- The Engadine or Ladin Dialects
- Puter — the upper Engadine valley (Engiadin' Ota)
- Vallader — the lower Engadine valley (Engiadina Bassa) and the Mustair valley (Val Müstair)
Puter and Vallader are sometimes referred to as one specific variety known as ladin, as they have retained this word to mean "Romansh". However, ladin is primarily associated with the closely related language in Italy's Dolomite mountains also known as Ladin. The ISO 639 language codes are rm
and roh
.
Romansch is spoken in the Swiss canton of Grisons or Graubünden, "the Grey League", which preserves the name of the self-defense organization of Romance speakers set up in the 15th century. It became part of Switzerland in 1803. Germans once called this language Chur-Wälsch, "foreign speech of Chur", for Chur was once the center of Romansch. Chur, even its cross-river suburb Wälschdorfli "foreign village", now speaks German: Romansch survives only in the upper valleys of the Rhine and the Inn.
[edit] Standardization
Romansh was standardized in 1982 by Zürich-based linguist Heinrich Schmid. The standardized language, called Rumantsch Grischun, has not been very well accepted, and speakers of the different dialects tend to address one another in German. This is leading to an acceleration of the decline of the language. On the orthographic level, Schmid sought to avoid all "odd-looking" spellings, in order to increase general acceptability of the new idiom and its spelling. Therefore, words with /tɕ/ followed by /a/, /o/, /u/ have <ch> (for example chalanda) as both speakers of Engadin (chalanda) and the Rhine territory (calanda) expect a spelling with <c>. However, <che> and <chi> are pronounced /ke/ and /ki/, <k> being a grapheme deemed unfit for a Romance language such as Romansh; therefore, words with /tɕ/ plus /e/ or /i/ have <tg> (for example tgirar) instead of <ch>. The use of <sch> for both /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, and of <tsch> for /tʃ/ is taken over from German, making Romansh spelling a compromise between Romance (Italian, French) and German spelling.
The Lia Rumantscha is the umbrella organization for all Romansh associations.
[edit] Official status in Switzerland
Romansh has been recognized as one of four "national languages" by the Swiss Federal Constitution since 1938. It was also declared an "official language" of the Confederation in 1996, meaning that Romansh speakers may use their Romansh idiom for correspondence with the federal government and expect to receive a Romansh response – in Rumantsch Grischun, because the federal authorities use the standardized idiom exclusively. However, the Constitution specifies that only native Romansh speakers can claim this privilege.[2]
In what the Federal Culture Office itself admits is "more a placatory and symbolic use" of Romansh, the federal authorities occasionally translate some official texts into Romansh and the official logo of the Confederation features all four languages. In general, though, demand for Romansh-language services is low, because according to the Federal Culture Office, Romansh speakers may either dislike the official Rumantsch Grischun idiom or prefer to use German in the first place, as most are perfectly bilingual.
On the cantonal level, Romansh is an official language only in the trilingual canton of Graubünden, where the municipalities in turn are free to specify their own official languages.
[edit] Literature
The emergence of Romansh as a literary language is generally dated to the mid-16th century. The Engadine dialect was first printed as early as 1552 in Jacob Bifrun's Christiauna fuorma, a catechism; a translation of the New Testament followed in 1560.
[edit] Alphabet and Phonology
[edit] Letters
The letters are:
Name of the letters are:
[edit] Consonants
The consonant phonemes of Romansh (Rumantsch Grischun) are set out in the following chart:
Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental and alveolar |
Alveolo- palatal |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop | p b | t d | k g | ||||
Affricate | ts | tɕ dʑ | tʃ | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | ||||
Approximant | r | j | |||||
Lateral approximant | l | ʎ |
[edit] Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Romansh are shown in the table below:
Monophthongs | Front | Back |
---|---|---|
Close | i | u |
Mid | ə | |
Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ |
Open | a |
Diphthongs | Closer component is front |
Closer component is back |
---|---|---|
Closing | ai | au |
Opening | ie |
Schwa /ə/ occurs only in unstressed syllables. Vowel length is predictable:
- Unstressed vowels are short.
- Stressed vowels in closed syllables (those with a coda) are:
- long before /r/
- short elsewhere
- Stressed vowels in open syllables are:
- short before voiceless consonants
- long elsewhere
[edit] Lexis
Examples of Common Vocabulary
English | Surselvisch | Sutselvisch | Surmeirisch | Puter | Vallader | Rumantsch Grischun | Latin |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
gold | aur | or | or | or | or,aur,ar | aur | aurum |
hard | dir | dir | deir | dür | dür | dir | dur |
eye | egl | îl | îgl | ögl | ögl | egl | oculus |
light, easy | lev | leav | lev | liger | leiv | lev | levis |
three | treis | tres | treis | trais | trais | trais | tres |
snow | neiv | nev | neiv | naiv | naiv | naiv | niveus |
wheel | roda | roda | roda | rouda | rouda | roda | rota |
cheese | caschiel | caschiel | caschiel | chaschöl | chaschöl | chaschiel | caseus |
house | casa | tgeasa | tgesa | chesa | chasa | chasa | casa |
dog | tgaun | tgàn | tgang | chaun | chan | chaun | canis |
leg | comba | tgomba | tgomma | chamma | chomma | chomma | gamba |
chicken | gaglina | gagliegna | gagligna | gillina | giallina | giaglina | gallus |
cat | gat | giat | giat | giat | giat | giat | cattus |
all | tut | tut | tot | tuot | tuot | tut | totus |
shape | fuorma | furma | furma | fuorma | fuorma | furma | forma |
I | jeu | jou | ja | eau | eu | jau | ego |
[edit] Some common expressions
- Allegra. - Hello or welcome
- Co vai? - How are you?
- Fa plaschair. - Pleased to meet you.
- Bun di. - Good morning.
- Buna saira. - Good evening.
- Buna notg. - Good night.
- A revair. - Goodbye.
- A pli tard. - See you later.
- Perstgisai. - I beg your pardon.
- I ma displascha. - I'm sorry.
- Perdunai. - Excuse me.
- Per plaschair. - Please.
- Grazia fitg. - Thank you very much.
- Anzi. - You're welcome.
- Gratulazions. - Congratulations.
- Bun cletg. - Good luck.
- Ils quants è oz? - What's the date today?
- Quants onns has ti? - How old are you?
- Viva! - Cheers!
[edit] See also
- German Wikipedia entry on Heinrich Schmid, the linguist whose work on standardization of the language resulted in Rumantsch Grischun.
[edit] External links
- A Romansh Grammar in Romansh
- Radio Televisiun Rumantscha
- Information about the Romansh language
- Ethnologue report for Romansch
- Website of the Lia Rumantscha organization
- Romansch - English Dictionary
- Romansch - English Dictionary, different Romansch dialects
- Official Romansch-German/German-Romansh Dictionary
- An Account of the Romansh Language by Joseph Planta FRS, originally published in the 1776 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
- Google Romantsch
- Google Directory - Romansh language
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ BBC News. Imogen Foulkes: Swiss dig world's longest tunnel
- ^ See art. 4 and 70 of the 1999 Swiss Federal Constitution. On the legal status of Romansh generally, see Isobel Leybold-Johnson. "Official Romansh still has some way to go", Swissinfo, September 21, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-09-21.
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